The Propaganda War Against Russia: What Is to be Done?

I tried to view the RT video of President Putin’s meeting with the opposition candidates that took place the morning after the elections in Russia. There was a short clip of his introductory remarks available and the full video running over an hour was listed next to it. But I was not allowed to see that one. Each time I clicked on the link YouTube fed me another video of someone attacking President Putin; the first time it was a video of the slimy Boris Johnson, the British Foreign Minister blathering on and on, the next click brought me a CNN study of a “tyrant,” and the next time, the head of NATO warning Russia to watch its step. And they talk about free speech and democracy. It really is enough to make you cry.

So we have to ask them, to paraphrase Cicero, the ones that claim to rule us, how far do you mean to stretch our patience? How long will your ambitions continue to frustrate us? At what point will your unrestrained inhumanity stop flaunting itself? Have the protests, the deaths, the police in the streets, the fears of the people, the fatigue from war, the need for peace, have the catastrophes that fell on you, and us, one after the other, not had any effect on you at all? Do you not see that your conspiracy has been exposed and recorded, that all the people know about it? Which of us do you think does not know what you were up to yesterday evening, what you were up to last night, where you were, with whom you got together, and what plan of action you decided upon?

Why are you still there? Do we have to remove you? What is the point in waiting any longer, when night cannot cloak your criminal plots in darkness, when a private house cannot confine conspiratorial voices inside its walls-if everything is exposed to the light of day, everything breaks out into the open? Take my advice, call off your plans, and stop thinking of assassination, arson and arms. Whichever way you turn you have been thwarted. Your plans are as clear as day to us. Go and leave us. We have no need of you.

And if you try to deny it we can take you through the long list of your crimes because for years now no crime has been committed that has not been committed by you. You have killed many and have oppressed and plundered more while escaping punishment and remaining free. You have managed not merely to ignore the law but to overturn and shatter it. The world, which could be a peaceful and social and progressive place in the universe is instead, not a jungle, for animals aren’t deliberately cruel, no, more, like a day in America, where every day is a violent day, an angry day. But no doubt I am wasting my breath stating what we all feel since they continue to expand and accelerate their crimes with each new day.

Their latest crimes approach comic opera. The propaganda attack being conducted against Russia regarding the Skripal affair is verging on the surreal since the most likely suspects are running the investigation. Today, as I write this, the day after the Russian election, we have the allegation that the Russian election was rigged inserted into the BBC news coverage of the elections. The second place finish of the communists is not mentioned but Mr. Navalny, who has little if any following in Russia and was barred from being a candidate because of his criminal record, is described as the “main opposition” stopped from taking part because of his political views. The meaning is plain. They are stating the elections were rigged and the outcome illegitimate, therefore Putin’s position as President is illegitimate, Russians can only laugh at such things of course but these absurdities are not designed for Russians but for the average media-massaged citizen in the west. For before every American and NATO attack the government of the country targeted begins to be described as a “regime,” a temporary and illegitimate government.

On top of that Boris Johnson, the fatuous British Foreign Minister, made the assertion that Russia had a ten year programme of making nerve agents, a bold fiction, but to try to add support to this lie the EU “urged Russia to provide immediate, full and complete disclosure of its Novichok programme to the international body, the Organisation For The Prohibition of Chemical Weapons,” disclosure, that is, of a progamme Russia does not have. Kafka would smile in recognition. Of course the reply that one does not exist will be described as proof that it does, since every denial by Russia of its involvement in the Skripal affair is characterised as a confession that it was and so we descend deeper into the rabbit hole and the deeper we go the more likely we are to emerge into war.

It seems to me, as other astute commentators have said, that the latest barrage in the propaganda war, part of NATO’s hybrid war, or war on all levels, against Russia, arises from the success of the Syrian and allied forces against the US and allied forces in Syria and the warning by the Russian General Staff, that a major attack on Syria that endangered Russians, by the Americans would bring retaliation in kind against the ships, planes or bases from which the attacks were launched. The reaction to this was for the Americans and their allies to delay attacking Syria until a propaganda campaign has built up enough anti-Russian feeling so that the public of the NATO and allied countries will support them when they decide to risk all and come into direct and major conflict with Russia. At this point there is still no stomach among the people for such a conflict. So they are going to make their stomachs stronger. The British government was happy and ready to oblige in doing its bit with the Skripal incident while the FBI and US media keep up their dramas in the United States. It seems this is what is taking place as Tass quoted the Deputy Russian Foreign Minister, Sergei Ryabkov on March 20, repeating the warning,

“We have been warning the United States about the need to abandon these plans unconditionally. Any illegal use of force, like the air attack on the Shayrat air base about a year ago, would be an act of aggression against a sovereign state, in accordance with the United Nations Charter.”

Dangerous times and yet the sewers of the western media pour their filth over our heads in a continuous stream. This should make us angry, I mean not just shaking our head over our morning coffee angry, or sounding off on Facebook angry, but marching on the streets angry, closing down the streets angry. Marshall McLuhan was right when he predicted decades ago that the new electronic media would create a new type of person, that the media would become the massage, the manipulator of the personality, of consciousness. Many are in need of what he called “open-mind surgery” to resist this manipulation. Alternative media, one of the scalpels available for that surgery, to cut through the lies and search for the truth, are under threat of more censorship while the mass media that they use against us are promoted as the “real news” the “trusted news.”

To be a true human being you need independence, creativity and consciousness and with the mass media our independence can only be expressed within their matrix. They want individual consciousness and creativity submerged in a mass consciousness; a product of mass production and mass propaganda that denies our independence, our rights as citizens to know, to be informed, to be respected. We are like Charlie Chaplin in Modern Times, ground down by the cogs in the wheels of the conveyor belt and rolled out of the production line as self-maintaining machines whose job is to keep quiet and make them money.

But we are not cogs in their machine. Certainly Russia, China, Iran, Cuba, North Korea, Venezuela and all the other peoples of the world who want peace and co-operation are not. From around the world governments and people congratulated President Putin on his re-election. The west just sulked and hissed. I would have liked someone further to the left, but perhaps the Russian people, in this time of threat, understandably decided to stay with what they know, a steady, intelligent hand at the helm, until the storm passes. President Putin perhaps recognizing this, called a meeting, the morning after the elections, of all the opposition candidates to ask for their help in administering the country and solving its problems together, to ensure the defence of the nation. It is difficult to deny his gravitas, his courage, his ability think and reason and above all his patience in dealing with the west. His restraint is dealing with the British insults has made them look like the fools they are. But the knives are drawn. The shadows are in motion. We are all in danger.

President Putin can expect the support of the Russian people. What about us here in the west? Are we to remain apathetic, disillusioned, pre-occupied with the struggle to make ends meet, and let ourselves be led by the nose to world war? President Putin thinks not. The Russian people agree. Have we lost hope? Is that why we are not on the streets where we should be to show them they can’t push us around? Or is just that people are still not yet aware of the dangers? On my desk I have a copy of a new book of essays edited by professors Fred Dallmayr and Demenchonok, entitled, A World Beyond Disorder, The Courage To Hope, a very effective title, for that is what we need, the courage to hope, for without hope there will be no action, and there we arrive at the eternal question, what is to be done? There is only one answer to that. Get together. Organise. See you on the streets.

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